The former Allied Landfill, seen here from Cork Street, east of Burdick Street.MLive / Kalamazoo Gazette File Photo

KALAMAZOO, MI — While work will continue this summer on cleaning up Portage Creek, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still working on a final plan for the contaminated Allied Paper landfill in Kalamazoo.

At a public meeting Wednesday, EPA officials said they will have a feasibility study ready for the public to view in the early part of this year. After the public has reviewed it and provided input, a plan on what to do with the site will be proposed in the spring, followed a decision in the fall.

Many local residents and organizations have been upset that a study has taken so long for the EPA to produce. The EPA, however, said it underestimated how much time it would take to complete the study.

"There's been a lot of moving parts," said Michael Berkoff, the EPA's remedial project manager for the landfills. "I feel we are very close."

While local environmentalists and the city are happy that work is being done on Portage Creek, they are concerned that no plan has been introduced to clean up the landfill. The landfill sits on a 220-acre site bordered by Stockbridge Avenue to the north, Portage Street to the east, Cork Street to the south and Burdick Street to the west.

Adding to the problem is that the landfill's former owner and responsible party for the cleanup, Millennium Holdings LLC, went bankrupt in 2010.

"So far, it's still in limbo," Bruce Merchant, public services director for the city, said last week.

There has also been debate over a bid from Environmental Quality Co. The Wayne-based company said in 2011 that it could clear the 1.5 million cubic yards of poly­chlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from the soil there for $98 million, compared to the $238 million cost estimated by the EPA.

The federal agency last year rejected the proposal because it lacked technical detail as to how it arrived at the projected cost. The city of Kalamazoo pressed for the Environmental Quality Co. proposal to be considered anyway.

Merchant said he and Mayor Bobby Hopewell met with the EPA in Chicago to talk about what can be done to clean up the landfill.

Merchant said he expressed his "displeasure with their lack of progress" but "didn't get too far." The EPA, he said, "expressed their frustration and lack of money to do things as well."

Many of the questions asked during Wednesday's public meeting in Kalamazoo were about the Allied landfill and why the EPA won't accept the Environmental Quality Co. proposal.

Berkhoff said there needs to be an "apples-to-apples" comparison in the feasibility study. In it, the EPA will provide information about the going rates for certain removal activities. He said the federal agency cannot base its study on one specific bid.

Gary Wager, president of the citizen group Kalamazoo River Cleanup Coalition, said he was not surprised that the EPA pushed back the timetable for the study again.

We "can’t get them to say what it is that inhibits them to consider full consideration to the (Environmental Quality Co.) bid," Wager said.

"Maybe somewhere in the deep, dark belly of the EPA they are considering it," he added. "It's frustrating to not get some answers."